Darkness and Dragons
by Fell moon Chronicler
Summary: a young undead describes his journey through his world and others, along the way he makes some powerful friends. and fights against powers not entirely within his realm of comprehension.


**So now I'm starting one in a game. I hope someone reads this, if you do, and you like it, could you tell other people about it, I think this might be pretty obscure. Anyway, I own my oc's and one of them won't be here for a while. Read on good viewer.**

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 _Once again I look at the stupid brown-yellow walls of stone that have been the extent of my world for more time then I can remember. I look up at the hole in the ceiling again and see the same stormy sky that I have seen every time. I look at the metal bars that keep me from leaving this stupid room, wishing that anything other than the stupid thin red people in grey rags would be there. I look in one of the crumbling pots in the corner again, hoping against hope that maybe I missed something, anything, in the previous searches._

 _As I walk to my preferred sitting corner a brown bag falls from the sky. I look up and see a man wearing bright metal armor. He lifts his head, almost as if in surprise, then he leaves my sight. I look down at the bag._

 _I open the bag and find some thin black clothes with some studded leather bands around the arms and stomach. Anything is better than this useless grey tatter I'm wearing._

 _When I finish putting on the clothing, I hear a clink. It's a key! I scoop up the key quickly and rush to the metal door. Wishing, willing, the key to work, I slot it into the keyhole in the door. I give the key a tentative twist and smile broadly when the door makes clicking noises. When I remove the key, the door creaks open by itself._

 _I stare at the key, then at the open hall. Back at the key, then to the hall once more._

 _Key._

 _Hall._

 _Key._

 _I feel myself cry, but without the feeling of tears on my cheek, not exactly surprising. The dead can't cry after all._

 _I run down the hall, a giddy feeling in my chest. I dodge the falling strike from one of the "shamblers" as I call them. And kick it in the head. A sickening crunch comes from the shambler and white particles float away from the creature and into my hand. I look at the back of my hand and see a small piece of normal skin, right in the center._

 _My sunken eyes widen, astonished at seeing normal flesh after all this time seeing nothing but ghoulflesh. I glance up at the hall, getting a better look at the shamblers, realizing that they would bring me back to life with their deaths. Not like anyone would care, they were locked here, same as me, when the mark appeared on them. Besides that, they have lost themselves to despair, but I still had thought._

 _Another of the shamblers stumbles toward me, a broken sword in its hand. I stand up, my head going to about the other undead's upper stomach. It swings the sword at me, a frenzy of slashes that each make a swishing sound with the broken blade's edge. I back away from the deranged creature. It doesn't seem to notice, no doubt distracted by its moving arm._

 _Finally after a few moments of movement the creature comes to a stop. By this time I've snuck around behind it, my new shoes making almost no sound against the crumbling tiles. The creature looks around for what it had thought its latest victim. As it does so I grab a piece of the wall that had fallen long ago. I heft the rock in both hands, bringing it over my head before slamming down on the creature's back. The shambler falls to the floor, its legs no longer working for some reason._

 _It turns around with its arms, a scratching sound emanating from the scrap of a sword in its hand. It raises its head to snarl at me, a disgusting sound that reminds me of a cat with a hole in its neck. I heft the rock again, crushing the monster's face with the pointed end of it. The corpse goes slack, its grip on the sword scrap loosing. Again the white flecks travel to me, widening the human skin on my hand._

 _I grab the blade, feeling the almost nonexistent weight to it. I grip it tightly in my right hand. A new found weapon in hand, I walk more confidently down the hall. I see another Shambler sitting against the wall, its head hung, and a bag of bombs in its hands. My dark eyes brighten as I run toward it. The creature doesn't even look up when I stab my blade into it's head. More flecks enter my hand, giving me an entire back to my hand. I swipe the bombs from the corpse and run down the now empty hall._

 _I enter a large square room, a pool of water taking up most of the floor, and a ladder leading up to my right. I climb the ladder, the hilt of my broken sword digging into my hand uncomfortably._

 _When I reach to top of the ladder I see a ruined room, a door of white light blocking my sight of what lies beyond. I walk toward the light, a strange feeling compelling me to walk through it. Beyond, I see a courtyard with a dead fire in the middle of it. I walk toward the flame and find a small spark in the center. I kneel down to it and blow on it, hoping desperately to feel the warmth of flame. The fire roars to life, a feeling of life returning to me. I sit before the flame, almost feeling the tears I wish to cry._

 _At length, I leave the flame, a feeling of the heat staying with me. I approach the massive double doors that lead into a cathedral. Opening one of the doors, I see a large room with another set of doors way at the other end of it. I walk through my door, a feeling of dread filling my body. I step forward cautiously, scanning the room around me for the source of my fear._

 _The floor shakes. I look ahead as a shadow covers me._

 _Before me stands a behemoth of a creature. With a large stomach and small legs, a thinner chest, and long arms holding a huge hammer. Its head is nothing but a horrifying mouth and tiny eyes. And behind it I see barely visible wings extend behind its girth, looking unlikely to lift its massive stomach. The creature hefts its hammer over its head, similar to how I had killed the shambler a moment ago with a rock. As the hammer comes down I dive to the side, getting up quickly to avoid being crushed by any following strikes. The creature starts to turn, a slow process._

 _As it turns, it jabs its hammer in the direction it is turning, using the weight of the hammer's head to turn faster. I dive again, this time rolling at the end to get up faster. Thinking about staying alive, I take one of the bombs I'd stolen from the shambler and throw it at the back of the creature. The monster stumbles, falling to one knee and its great stomach. I take another one, pitching this one at its head. The blast knocks the monster over, its limbs unable to reach the ground for its gut. I run toward the struggling beast, climbing up its rolls of fat as I stand on its back._

 _The beast's struggles intensify, it probably realizing my intentions. I dash across the monster's back, reaching it's shoulders just as it finally rights itself. The beast tries to shake me free. I grab onto one of the horns on its head, something I hadn't seen from my low vantage point. Eventually the creature stumbles again. 'Stupid thing made itself dizzy.' I think with a chuckle. I bring my blade up in both hands, lifting it high over my head. The creature looks up, tilting its head back and giving me a perfect shot at its face. The creature's eyes widen. Then they close, the monster having come to grips with its death. I plunge the blade down with all my strength._

 _The monster lets out a cry as I hold the blade in its face._

 _After a minute, the beast's struggles lessen and finally end, the creature finally having died. It falls forward, cracking the ground with its dead weight. I tumble down from the monster's shoulders as it falls, my blade staying lodged in its head. My face droops with the loss of my small blade, a perfect fit for my tiny form. I look at the hammer the beast had dropped, wondering what to do with that. A sound catches my attention. I look back at the fat monster, afraid it was still alive. More of the white flakes from before, a much greater number this time, leave the corpse of the monster._

 _The flakes congregate with those of the previous ones, making an entire hand and forearm of normal skin. I look back at the now slightly thinner beast and see a black wisp with white edging float out of it, joining the flakes. A slight discoloration appears on my palm, a small curved rectangle with a sharp beginning._

 _I look away from my hand, confused at this latest development. I walk toward the hammer and touch it. The hammer glows a lively golden color, turning into a ball of this light before entering my hand as well. I look at my hand and see no visible change. I shrug, looking around. Relocate the doors I had come in here to go through._

 _The doors are locked, so I look around more. Finally I see a small side door hidden off to the right. I walk through it, taking a few steps before a metal plate blocks the path back off. I twist my neck to look at it, I see a dent in the red metal. 'must have been to keep back the big ugly guy.' I realize. I look back at my only path, a small light at the end of it catching my attention._

 _At the bottom of the stairs I found myself on, I find another small fire, and happily bring it to life before sitting down at it. I feel the warmth that had just started to diminish in me grow strong again. I see my skin take on a healthy tan, something that makes me smile and chuckle._

 _I look around the room as I stand up, another door catches my attention. I move toward it before a shape catches my attention on the opposite wall. A skeleton with an arrow sticking through its chest. Knowing the undead were nothing if not patient, I peek my head out around the corner, and see the archer that has been waiting for an indeterminate length of time. The ghoul sees me and lets the tension from his ancient bow and let's an antique arrow fly free._

 _I duck back behind the wall as the arrow flies by and imbeds itself in the corpse on the opposite wall. I slip out of the room while the archer redraws his bow. As I run up the sloped hallway I notice a room off to the side and dive into it as another rotting arrow whistles by._

 _The room is small and square, and formed from the crumbling brown bricks. At the far end of the room is a skeleton with a dark diamond shaped shield. Thinking quickly I snatch up the shield and strap it to my left arm._

 _I spin around and walk back out of the room striding confidently toward the archer as he nocks and fires another arrow with his splintering bow. The arrow scratches off of my shield and spins off into the hall._

 _The archer fires again. And again. And again. Each time I block with my shield; and on the fifth shot, the old bow snaps under the strain, a part of it slashing the archer's face. The ghoul doesn't even stagger from the wound, but simply grabs one of his arrows and charges me. I grab the shield with my right hand and sweep from right to left, smashing the piece of metal into the ghoul's ribs and collapsing them while throwing him into the left hand wall. He crumples into a heap as I loom over him, bringing my shield up before slamming it down on his head over and over. Eventually his head makes a squelching sound and dark blood splashes the floor and wall._

 _More white flakes float to me, this time passing through my shield as if nonexistent, and ring around my arm, stretching the area of living skin even further, all the way up to my elbow_

 _I walk away from the destroyed corpse and down a left hand turn in the hallway; and walk out into direct sunlight. The sun peeks out from behind scattered clouds, and caresses my human skin. I look out over the iron fencing and see hills stretch out as far as the eye can see. I hear a shambling noise and see more of the thin walking corpses, this time in loose fitting plate armor wielding thin swords._

 _The three shamblers move toward me as one and lift their swords high over their heads. I dive forward, rolling between two of the shamblers who strike each other as I pass. Both of those turn on each other in moronic rage, leaving me only one enemy to deal with._

 _The final shambler moves toward me and sweeps its sword from left to right, hoping to get me with a wider arc of attack._

 _I let the strike slide off me shield in a rasping ring before lunging forward with my shield, slamming it into the shambler's knees and making it crash backwards. I pull the shield close to my chest and jump on the shambler's head, using all my and the shield's weight to crush its leather helm, and the desiccated skull within. Two streams of white flakes float to my arm, telling me that one enemy still lived._

 _I role away from the flat headed dead as the last one moved toward me. I rose into a crouch as I caught sight of my remaining enemy. A gash had opened its chest slightly, and another one had severed its off hand. The ghoul leapt through the air at me, swinging its thin blade through the air as it did, I role under the strike and turn to face my enemy again. But before I can even stand the beast is leaping through the air again, forcing me to role to the side this time, leaving nothing behind me but the spiked iron fence._

 _I turn to my enemy again and see it flying through the air once more. I role again and hear it cry out in rage. I spin around again and see that the spiked tops of the fence are sticking out of its back, trapping it. It swings its sword madly, trying to catch anything in the furious arcs. I finally stand up and stalk over to the creature's back._

 _I look at the beast and wonder how to kill it to collect the white flakes. I look around and the thin sword of the other shambler's catches my attention. I walk over to one of the disintegrating corpses and swipe the two and a half foot weapon from its crumbling grasp._

 _I rush back to the trapped shambler and search for the place to strike to end it quickest. I can't reach it's head, and it's back has already been skewered, so I'm going to half to hope that it can still bleed to death. I hack at its legs for a moment, until the blood starts flowing from a dozen wounds. The shambler growls at me and reaches back with its arms in a vain attempt to ward me off._

 _I stab at its torso, adding to the damage done by the fence, and finally the shambler slumps on the fence, white flakes forcing my human skin up to my shoulder. I turn away from the dead thing and see a lever almost as tall as I am framed by a doorway into the room the hammer wielding monster had resided in._

 _I vaguely remember seeing large doors opposite of the ones I had entered the room from and figure that this lever must open them. I stand behind the length of tarnished bronze and shove my shoulder into it, pushing with all my might and just barely managing to move the lever at first, then all at once the lever gave way and I lost my balance, falling off the balcony and into the room._

 _My vision swam and my back ached for a time I cannot fully remember. After a time my vision cleared and I stood up, looking straight ahead I saw the doors that I had remembered; now open fully and revealing a pathway leading to a ruin. I walked toward the open doors, spotting a corpse by the entry way I made my way to it and found a serrated dagger jutting from its chest. I grabbed the dagger and pulled, noticing the amount of resistance I got from the serrations. The blade came free with a tearing sound and left a gaping hole in the body, but when I looked at the blade I saw only a splash of dark blood. I shrug it off and slip the blade into a fold in the back of my right boot. The blade slid home easily and I surmised the fold must be for such a purpose._

 _I trudge up the old pathway to the ruins, hoping to find some kind of sign telling me what to do next._

 _When I reach the ruins I see mountains arrayed before me like the remnants of a war between giants. Jagged peaks and cliff faces making up a good portion of the landscape._

 _FLAPPALP_

 _The sound draws my attention downward. I lean over the edge of the ruin and see nothing at first, but then a crow nearly as big as the hammer wielding monster bursts into my field of vision, claws extended to catch me. Before I can properly react the claws encircle me and drag me into the air, the crow swooping away from the asylum quickly and soaring away from it. We zip by one of the mountains I had seen before and I see a clearing nestled at the base of an indescribably large cathedral that had fallen into disrepair. The bird set me down in this clearing, right before another of those flames at the base of a sword, and flew onto a nearby wall, perching as if carrying half-ghouls was a normal occurrence for it, and perhaps it was, I had no clue what that bird did in its spare time._

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Flash back ends.

The crackling of fire wakes me from my slumber. I open my eyes and see flames surrounding my body, my skin unburned by the blistering heat. Beyond the flame I see a world growing before my eyes. I hear wind whistle past my ears carrying a cry with it. "What in Oblivion is that!" A man shouts before a sound like thunder fills the air. I see the sky tinge red as if set ablaze like me. Stones of a similar size to me scream passed, and crash into stone walls and wooden houses.

I find myself falling toward a tower with a great black drake perched atop it, gazing at all around it like a wrathful king. I reach the ground and the fire dispels from my body, washing out over the ground in a golden wave. I girl with short onyx hair looks at me from her kneeling position at a headsmen's block, the executioner looming over her but his axe hanging loosely from his hands. I stand to my full height, nothing grander than five feet but with my black knight armor I strike a fearsome visage. I move toward the pair of humans, rage filling my being at one so young having her life in the hands of another. The executioner notices me and hefts his axe in warning.

I only glance at the bigger man, my eyes glowing a baleful orange with my ire. The man backs away, another man, this one in leather armor, pulls him away by his shoulder, saying something about protecting a general. The girl cries out in fear as another stone crashes down beside her, shattering into glowing shards; one of the glowing pieces of stone lashing across her face, leaving a gash across her face from her right cheek and over her nose before continuing on its path through the air.

I step closer to the girl and kneel beside her.

"Are you able to stand?" I ask her, my voice rasping from lack of use.

She nods slowly, a tear traveling down her skin and hissing on the wound on her face. I help her to stand and we move away from the tower as it crashes down on the stone block she had kneeled at a moment before.

"This way!" A man in leather armor with brown hair shouts over the chaos. The girl moves ahead of me and leads me through a throng of people hiding in a stone tower. "Head up to the second floor, it has more room." The same man says, gesturing to a staircase hugging the wall of the tower. The girl and I move the direction he had indicated and find a soldier firing a bow out of a window.

A second later the dragon from before smashes through the wall, making a large gap before bathing the man in fire, speaking a barely perceptible word as it did so.

The dragon disregards the pair of us and simply alights from the wall, taking a few more stones with it as it leaves. Out the opening in the wall I see the second story of a burning house. "We have to jump, this tower isn't safe. The only way to survive is to keep moving." I tell the girl. She nods, her ice blue eyes shining with determination before she takes a running leap out the open wall.

I follow her a second later, breaking my fall with a roll. The girl stumbles in her landing, the impact jarring her legs no doubt. "I'm fine." She says when I turn around, her voice telling me she wasn't injured. I nod and walk down the stairs and out the front door.

A group of soldiers take refuge behind an overturned cart, beckoning a small boy to leave his dying father. "Be strong my son, and survive this day." The man says brokenly as the dragon from before lands with an earth shaking boom. The father pushes the boy away from him with the last of his strength before the dragon sets him ablaze. After this the dragon simply takes off once more, kicking up a cloud of ash and dirt in its wake.

I notice an alley way behind the cloud and pull the girl along with my by her hand. The alley way leads to a dead end in the form of rubble ahead of us, but a path to the right remains open and manned by an archer. The dragon lands again, this time on the wall behind the girl and I. She tackles me through a doorway into a burning building just before a wall of flame reduces the man to a charred corpse. We made our way through the crumbling building, dodging falling timber on more than one occasion, and found ourselves in a courtyard filled with soldiers, one of them wearing a decorated cuirass, likely a ranking officer, and a woman in yellow robes tossing fireballs at the circling dragon as archers loosed numerous arrows at it, none hitting their mark. The man from before, the one with the brown hair ran passed us. "This way, we can escape through the keep." He says as he leads us away.

We follow him into a room with straw beds on the left, and a chest on the right, another wall sticking partially into the wall, obscuring the rest of the room. "Looks like we're safe enough in hear. Could that really have been a dragon, like in the ancient tales? A harbinger of the end times?" The man asks worriedly. "One thing at a time. First we should busy ourselves with surviving, and then we can ask questions." I say. "You're right; we have more important things to do right now. Here let me help you with those bonds." He says, drawing a short dagger from a sheath on his belt. The girl steps closer to him, holding her hands out in front of her.

He grabs the frayed rope and pulls back on it with the knife, cutting the weak rope easily and freeing her hands. "There should be some armor in one of these chests, why don't you see about finding yourself something better than those rags?" The man says, pointing at the wall jutting into the room. The girl nods and walks off behind the wall, a sound like creaking hinges can be heard a moment later, followed by rustling cloth. "And what about you, you may be sporting a full set of armor, but do you have a weapon?" He asks me. On reflex I reach into the back of my armored boot, and find my trusty serrated dagger waiting for me like an old friend.

I toss the dagger into my left hand and hold it in a reverse grip then hold up my right hand and wake my pyromancer's flame. "Ah, a spell sword, not too many of you around, most people around here prefer to stick to simple steel." He said approvingly. "By the way, my name is Hagvard, what's yours?" "Noholo, that's the name I was given when a man saved me, I don't remember a name before that." I answer honestly. "Well, I can't say I've heard a name like that before, but your name is your own." He replies. "And what would your name be miss?" He says, looking passed me. I turn around and see that the girl has donned a set of leather armor like Hagvard. "Aria Sterk, and I'm also a spell sword." She says, brandishing a shining sword in her right hand, and a bright flame in her left.

"Well, now that everyone is armed, let us be on our way. He lead us down a corridor at the end of the room, at the end of the corridor is a door formed of iron bars. Hagvar pulls a chain beside the door and it retracts into a slot above the doorway. He steps through the door and is hit in the back by the butt of a battle axe.

Not even a second later a woman in blue cloth armor with fur gloves and boots steps into view and makes a two handed swing with the same weapon. I ignite my flame and spray out a fire whip, slashing angrily at the woman before me. The flame bites into her cloth armor, setting it ablaze in an instant. She drops the axe and tries in vain to brush the raging flames off of her body. I end her life with a thrust of my dagger into her throat, silencing her screams and replacing them with a choked gurgle. A man kicks me in the ribs and tries to bring down a pair of hand axes on my head, but Aria slices the back of his legs and makes him crash into the ground before slicing the back of his neck, ending his life with a near decapitation. "Now we're even." She says, panting slightly from exertion. "So it would seem." I reply.

Hagvar gets to his feet and turns to us. "Well, it would seem that you are more than a match for stormcloaks. Let's move on." He says, moving toward a door of the same design as the last one.

He pulls at the latch but the door remains shut fast. "Ah, its locked, see if there was a key in the last room." He says stepping away from the door and taking a drink from a red potion. "No need." I say, stepping forward and grabbing the skeleton key hanging from my neck by a metal chain. I bend before the lock and insert the key, the shifting sides of the key squashing to meet the design of the tumblers within. I give the key a twist and the door swings open. "A spell sword and carrying a skeleton key, you are an interesting one indeed." Hagvar says, stepping through the door and leading us down the curving stairs.

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 **And that is the first installment of what is currently my favorite story. As all we authors say, rate review and tell your friends about it.**


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